DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH – Coming Back and Going Some More

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DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH
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DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Coming Back and Going Some More

TAGS: Roscoe Giffin, Southern Mountaineer, Cincinnati, migration, report, Social Service Association of Greater Cincinnati, Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee, workshop, Kentucky migration, sociological studies, statistics, population studies

ROSCOE GIFFIN AND THE 1954 CINCINNATI WORKSHOP

In April of 1954, Roscoe Giffin, faculty at Berea College, Kentucky attended an important workshop held in Cincinnati, Ohio, and convened by the Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee [MFRC] and the Social Service Association [SSA] of Greater Cincinnati. The gathering was titled simply, “The Southern Mountaineer in Cincinnati.” The workshop was conceived as a means to review the growing complexity of social issues surrounding “the newcomers from the Kentucky’s hills.”

Dr. Giffin was asked to write the “The Southern Mountaineer in Cincinnati,” April 29, 1954, [the copy represented here is a second printing] that would bring together the issues facing the group and to assist in preparing the final report with the staff of the Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee. Giffin’s work is a benchmark study of the going and sometimes coming back of Appalachian families who migrated to urban settings.

The issues for discussion determined by the participants were outlined as statements in the study:

Substantial migration from the hills will go on due to the area’s poverty and high birthrate
These migrants’ adjustment to city life, as workers, parents and citizens, is important to Cincinnati
Too many now make a poor adjustment, to their own hurt and that of social agencies, city services, schools, churches, industry, and community relations generally
The gap and conflict between living-ways of hills and city can be studied like any intergroup problem
Pooling local experience and sociological data can reduce our ignorance and stereotypes, in fruitful consultation

A little over 200 individuals attended the workshop. With the support of the SSA [Social Service Association of Greater Cincinnati], and the MFRC [Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee], and a host of social workers, educators, government officials, personnel directors, and church and civic leaders, the joined effort produced a report. “The Southern Mountaineer in Cincinnati,” April 29, 1954, [here, second printing]. The final report was compiled by the staff of the Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee and Dr. Roscoe Giffin, of Berea College. It is a classic study of the going and coming back of Appalachian families to urban settings.

Dr. Giffin’s report is based on his observations of the work of the Cincinnati workshop and his own observations of the “culturally determined patterns of behavior which the Southern Mountaineers bring with them when they come to live north of the Ohio River.” By the necessity of the requirements of the urban setting, Dr. Giffin focused his report on “observed patterns of behavior” of the Southern Mountaineers in the urban setting and not on generalized behaviors associated with the people in their mountain regions. This declared bifurcation did not always work out in Dr. Giffin’s report, as it is near impossible to separate the two without assigning the Appalachian urban dweller a new identity. But, perhaps that is one of his points.

KENTUCKY MIGRATION

What is so very valuable in Giffin’s study is the substantive work that he brought to the gathering social crisis identified with the mass migration of Appalachians to northern industrial cities such as Cincinnati. Statistically, he paints a growing population shift after 1870 in Ohio from the migration of populations from three states: Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

By 1910 Kentucky had the second-largest number of migrants in Ohio in the metropolitan area of Cincinnati. The largest population migration was to Pennsylvania, and West Virginia represented the third largest. By 1950 the entire Southern Appalachians were populated by approximately 8 million people. Also by 1950 the distribution was roughly the same, but the new Ohio (not just Cincinnati) immigrant numbers had increased dramatically

1950 MIGRANTS

Pennsylvania	309,000 (new residents living in Cincinnati)
Kentucky	275,000 (new residents living in Cincinnati)
West Virginia	103,000 (new residents living in Cincinnati)

In the United States in 1950, Giffin informs us that there were some 3.5 million people who had been born in Kentucky but only 2.4 million were living there. This put 1.1 million people living somewhere else. This suggests that the out-migration rate was near 1 in every 3 persons born in the state of Kentucky who chose to live somewhere other than Kentucky. Giffin points to the recurring cycle of coal-related employment as the impetus for most migration. As coal began to decrease production following the end of World War II its market shares saw a sharp decline and the jobs related to coal quickly collapsed. The economic bottom drop out from under the poorly trained miners and those dependent on the coal economy. Out-migration saw upwards of 100,000 plus or minus people leave the state of Kentucky during the decline as coal began decreasing its production. The whip-lash boom and bust of coal production continued for decades following the downturn exhausting both people and industry.

What seems so striking about the migration of people from the Southern Appalachians is the mobility of the migrants as they experienced the rapid shifts. While their mobility was fluid, the population tended to unite in cultural clusters within the chosen destinations. The cultural cohesion in the new locations was and is not remarkable to Kentucky migrants. They migrated but they rarely severed their roots. Time and again Dr. Giffin notes the flow of cars filled with migrants going back to their states of origin for brief visits. When times get tough and the migration increases the flow expands but as economic conditions improve for the families the ebb tide brings them back to “home” and family. This brief but frequent return and immersion in their familiar surroundings, Giffin describes as a desire for the familiar, an integration that can be described as “knowing your way around” — a kind of immersion in family ties that reduces the emotional deficit” that strange places often bring about.”

THE PROCESS OF APPALACHIAN MIGRATION

Giffin describes the process of migration as a familiar set of actions. At “home” the migrants sit around their familiar tables, laden with the familiar comfort foods, and tell family stories and share stories of the new familiar city life. City life holds a considerable attraction for the young and a tense dynamic often begins to evolve in the nuclear family. Giffin suggests that the larger the family the stronger the pull for migrants to maintain a connection with their home area. This “familism is a force that repeats itself over and over again in large Appalachian families, both yesterday and today. It is of interest to Giffin that, as the Appalachian birth rate slowed starting in the 1950s to a 38/1000 ratio today, the pull to return “home” has not slowed significantly though the returning population is largely comprised of those of retirement age. Another shift noted by Giffin in the urban populations is that the birth rate among the migrant Appalachian families declined. The result was a lessening of the pressure placed on housing in the urban landscape. The housing demographic is of particular interest to Giffin.

He suggests that the quality of living in an urban environment while supporting a family of 7 to 8 children requires significant income. Food, which often came from family gardens is now no longer available in the city and must be purchased and on top of rent. The economic demands substantially reduced any gains in the family income. Housing in the city for transient populations is generally rental and often sub-standard as the urban landlords often exhibit hostile patterns of behavior toward the Appalachian populations and extortion is not uncommon.

The new economic demands, particularly the housing demands gave families some urgency to seek out and form strong community bonds with Appalachian neighbors and other migrants and ethnic minorities. Giffin points out that these bonds are necessarily strong bonds.

WOMEN

In the 1950s, however, the patterns of behavior in the Appalachian family were not so remarkable to only that demographic. Giffin seeks to describe them as a people apart, but the activity he assigns to their situation was repeated in many cities in the United States. It is a behavior that he called “well-marked.” He points us toward the women in the household. Women across the country, he reminds us, were not leaving the home to work he declares. Men still dominated the household wage-earner position women were still discouraged from leaving the home to work.

Women who did seek employment often faced the criticism of other women who saw work as interfering with child raising. Care for children and affordability of child care were strong deterrents to women desiring to work outside the home in the 1950s. It was a trend that was diminishing but could still be found in communities throughout the country. Giffin declares that the move to city life disrupted the cycle of “chores” that Appalachian family members engaged in. He observes, that the discipline that accompanied the cyclical work routines such as working the land and maintaining animals began to fall away in the city and new patterns began to develop.

Giffin observed that neighbors in the migrant communities of the city often changed frequently and long interpersonal relationships were hard to establish. “Knowing your neighbor” and relying on the neighbor in an emergency became significant issues for struggling families in the city. The desire for the “community” had driven the Appalachians into extended communities of relatives and regional clusters but even those could not sustain the pressures of urban life. The family authority also shifted to the mother, suggests Giffin, as the fathers were often more absent in the city environment. Giffin notes that this shift in parental control often resulted in the children’s and mothers’ anger issues toward the “absent but frustrated control needs” of the father.

WORK AND “JUST SETTIN” AND SCHOOL

Social issues surrounding motivation are also cited by Giffin. He declared that the rural behavior which he calls, “just settin’ showed a marked disinclination toward competition and did not prepare the transplanted migrant children to deal with the competitive rivalry of city living. This lack of competitive rivalry, he notes did little to prepare the children for success against the more competitive and versatile city dweller. Giffin tells us that “just settin'” is seen as “loafing” by the native city-dwellers and a growing bias began to be evident in the areas of work and school.

Schooling was also a significant flash-point in the dialogs of workshop participants. Giffin looked at the graduation statistics of the mountain counties of Kentucky and determined that less than 15% completed high school in 1950. In some counties, he studied he found that in the age group of adults over 45 most had less than 5 years of schooling. Absenteeism was a chronic problem in the mountains and he cited the observation of half to one-third of the 7 to 13-year-old children who were out of school! This low regard for education placed many of the children far below their peers when they relocated to the city. It is little wonder muses Giffin that absenteeism was a chronic problem with the migrating families. in their new home.

MILITARY SERVICE

Giffin’s figures for the military draft, seem to disagree with the popular notion that the Southern Appalachians saw a disproportionate number of men swept up in the draft. The general myth has persisted that the Appalachians go to war in disproportionate numbers, This appears to Giffin as incorrect. The picture of strong young and eager men going to war and showing unusual bravery, such as the classic Sgt. York film mythology was not born out in the statistics. Based on an article cited by Giffin authored by J.J. McGrath, “Selective Service Rejectees — a Challenge to Our Schools,” in School Life, Vol. 35, No. 2, Dec. 1952 (pp. 35-37), the Selective Service in 1952 rejected 1/3 to 1/2 of all young men called into service from the Southern Appalachian region. This statistical analysis places the Appalachian region’s states among the highest rejection rates in the nation in 1952. However, this does not take away from the high numbers from the region that served with honor and distinction in both WWI and WWII.

RELIGION

On the topic of religion, the Giffen study also has some surprising observations. He makes room for basically two strains of religious practice. The one, the Holiness organizations, he suggests are attached to social status and reflect the belief that members “…are the elect because anyone who is rich obviously didn’t get there on the basis of virtue.” This “virtuous” group of believers is contrasted with the second group of more mainline denominations. This group is seen to be more affluent and members of the Baptist or more fundamentalist traditions. He notes that both the Holiness adherents and the Baptists seem to ignore the social gospel and show little interest in associating their beliefs with a social consciousness or action. This rather harsh observation suggests to Giffin that religion played a negligible role in moving the migrants toward any organized social self-rehabilitation.

MONEY MANAGEMENT AND “The characteristic of the species ,,,”

Money management is another area that Giffin cites as problematic to some classes of Appalachian migrants in their new urban homes. A pattern that Giffin points to is the lack of ability to negotiate the thrift of tangible property and the saving of money. He notes an “easy come easy go” attitude to money earned by many Appalachians. He also suggests that there is another set of values, including thrift, that can be seen in some migrants. It is a tendency that Giffin suggests has its origins in the mountaineers’ Puritan heritage but then does not further explain. Giffin suggests that the Cincinnati social service folk will rarely see migrants who come to their offices seeking relief from their social problems. Giffin points to what he sees as a tendency for the migrants to see themselves as small numbers in a large city. As a group, they migrate in very small numbers to the city and only rarely will seek financial aid or present themselves as a perceived “problem case.”

At this point in the Giffin report, a phrase jumped off the page at this reader. It was his use of “the characteristic of the species ‘Southern Mountaineer’.” “Species”! Really? Up to this point, I could find points of identity with many of his observations, but suddenly I found myself lumped with a “species” that was separate from the rest of America. I began feeling like many migrants must have been made to feel in their new home. A “Rare species” suggests that any migrant from the Southern Appalachians is a rare species apart from the greater humanity — a sub-human being? The often-made comments about the Appalachian’s long and lanky arms, “slouching” figures, out-houses, and “Why do you talk different —look different?” surged to the top of my brain. Giffin, now seemed, to this reader, as the unsympathetic observer and not an advocate for the welfare of the migrant he first seemed to champion.

Through the lens of the twenty-first century and as a Central Appalachian Mountaineer [Southern Mountaineer], I suddenly found myself wanting to take issue with Giffin and his observations. I wanted to be sitting in his classroom at Berea debating what made a sociologist tribalize his subjects — and that class full of Appalachian students. Strange as this reaction may seem to some, it was associated with the very section of the Giffin study that dealt with the freedom to see things differently. In many ways, Giffin touched on a dilemma that still plagues migrants and immigrants throughout the world. How do we maintain our identity with dignity and not with our native defenses? On reading this section again it seemed valuable to transcribe a section in its entirety. Reading the quote again, I forgave him a little for his use of “species” which he isolated by quotes around “Southern Mountaineer”

“Free to Differ, But —: Continuing this listing of the characteristics of the species “Southern Mountaineer,” we must not overlook the behavioral patterns centered around individualism. They expect to have their own decisions accepted and grant to others the right to their own decisions and the right to differ. ‘…Mountain people are inclined to be nonconformists. Many … have … ability to go their own way … being quite sure that their own way is just as good as anyone else’s.'” (20)

The quote within the quote is that of Edwin E. White, who wrote Highland Heritage, published by Friendship Press, New York, (p.35), in 1947. It is often cited in connection with the perplexing problem of defining “culture” in Appalachia. In actuality, White’s book was written in 1937, not 1947. It was then re-published in 1947, ten years later, with no revisions. White, a Presbyterian minister, was not unlike William Aspenwell Bradley, whose article, “The Folk Culture in the Cumberlands,” in the Dial of 1918, tried to make a direct connection of Folk culture as found in Appalachia with the essence of American civilization. Even early writers as admired as John C. Campbell, in The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, used a broad brush to categorize mountain people…. it always ended badly as it set us apart — while yet giving us a “homeland” and consequently an identity.

The insistence on associating Appalachian mountain people with specific ethnic, even racial, folk, and, for goodness sake, “species,” has been a trend that has plagued the field of Appalachian studies for the length of its existence. Sometime after 1920 this need to isolate the exceptional in the native Appalachian dweller began to fray and today our contemporary conception of the nature of America’s civilization is one that is fundamentally comprised of both migrants and immigrants who share many of the same aspirations basic to well-being.

Another grave concern in the report of the Cincinnati workshop, in this writer’s view, is the omission of a full accounting of African-American Appalachians as integral to an understanding of Appalachians, generally. Irish? Italians? Or? To read the report is to assume that there were no African Americans making the journey to Cincinnati to find work and that the only interaction occurs with “natives” or so-described Anglo-Saxon whites. The African American, Irish, Italian, German, and other racial and ethnic populations are also represented as distinct sub-cultures but rarely are they isolated as a “migration” group from some American rural area. African Americans fleeing slavery and poverty in the South seem the most closely aligned to the Appalachian migrant.

“Other,” is used today to set people apart and it continues to be a divisive word for Appalachian residents identified with a so-called Anglo-Saxon origin. Pulled along as “other,” America’s sub-cultures and sub-groups make up smaller proportions of many regions populations, but none of us is exempt from some sub-culture. The ratio of the “other” migrants in the Cincinnati social complex and their social relationship in the urban community is still under construction and discussion. Clearly, these “other” populations were not been seen as integral to a discussion of the whole of the Appalachian migrants in the 1950s.

All this close analysis of Giffin left me wondering about the isolation of intervention. It left me wondering if a consideration all “others” would have come to fit Giffin’s analysis. Would those “others” have benefited from the targeted social services that aimed to care for the Appalachian migrants? What were the similarities? What were the differences? Who saw them as not “fitting” the social need? Would the “other” qualify as a “species” of Appalachian? Such is the nature of the continuing debate about what constitutes an Appalachian. Clearly, when “other” is used, or “species ” is defined, someone is disenfranchised. “Other” builds a wall around people. The term fragments the discussion of what should be universal empathy for the distress of all populations forced to migrate and to immigrate. Social intervention needs to be a human instinct for all people in distress, both here and abroad. Intervention can not be parsed out to species, but only to people. Recognition and empathy for the individual seem to still be out of the reach of our contemporary world which is now even more fractured than in the 1950s ….. and just what is “maximum recognition”? Empathy does not to be re-packaged.

MAXIMUM RECOGNITION

The author’s report continues its discussion of “Free to Differ, But …” and Giffin says

A practical application of these observations might be that personnel policies need to provide maximum recognition for the individual if their work is to yield mutual satisfaction.

I believe that this individualism shows up also as a tolerance which partly explains the fact that they possess less of the deep-seated racial and religious prejudices characteristic of many Americans, both North and South. I am of the opinion that in the right atmosphere, they will lose their prejudices rather quickly. Such prejudice as they have is more like a coat than a suit of underwear into which one has been sewed. At Berea, we have found that their socially inherited prejudices yield quite readily to the medication of the integrated living of diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups.

Migration is a story of going and coming back, but today’s migration is also a story of the struggle to identify a place that welcomes and understands going and coming back. We now have a world in a state of migration and immigration as people seek to leave places where life has become intolerable. Today people are on the move due to many reasons: economic pressures, civil strife, political oppression, war, disease, and drought. ocean rise, environmental disasters, and a myriad of other impingements on quality of life.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS

But, with an eye to the growing tensions in contemporary life, all these dilemmas bring us to another characteristic found in Giffin’s study. That is, “Mind Your Own Business.” While most scholars acknowledge the general individualism and tolerance of the Appalachian people, there is a long history of feuds among Appalachian people that could quickly escalate and result in violence. Such anger can also be slow to dissolve, says Giffin in his analysis. Guns still play a role in solving grudges, family disputes, and perceived injustices. With the prevalence of guns in society today and the long-standing role of guns in Appalachian households, this tendency is and should be a point of major concern to urban and rural social service providers, alike. I suspect Giffin would find many who are sympathetic to this view.

WORDS ARE DIFFERENT

Well, I knew it was coming. Our language. Words Are Different, says Giffin — when spoken by an Appalachian. He notes that the language of Appalachian folk is distinctive. There is no disputing this auditory evidence, Scholars and others have found the distinctive sound and pattern and choice of words in the language of many Appalachians to be a treasure and a wealth of creative expression. Others have found the language of Appalachians to be “Hillbilly English” and a way to single “those people” out from the mainstream of American life and to label them as “ignorant”, uncultured, and lacking in social skill, particularly the skills of social dialog. It is my view and that of Giffin that what is needed is not a re-tooling of Appalachian English but a lesson in listening to the general population. We all need to listen — not just to the unique cadence and construction of the language found among Appalachian people, but also to what is being said. We could all benefit from a conversation that doesn’t focus on the “accent” before listening to the message.

SUMMARY

In summary, Dr. Giffin leaves us with this message. Listen and Look and get Beyond the Data. He questions whether we can statistically isolate the average Southern Mountaineer and notes that his survey is preliminary and partial.

He provided the conference attendees a list of his summarized innate characteristics of Appalachian migrants

	Behavior is directed by the traditions of the culture, but marked individualism is an aspect of this tradition.
	At home in the mountains, the stranger is received usually with cordial hospitality which may be concealed beneath certain shyness and reticence of manner.
	Placidity of manner and behavior yields readily to any word or action which infringes on the prevailing definition of the rights of a free independent, self-reliant individual.
	When so provoked, the response is apt to be militant if not violent.
	Persons of authority tend to be defined as threatening rather than helping symbols though accredited authority is usually paid its due.

Throughout this report by Dr. Giffin I kept thinking of my grandfather in a migrant culture in some city in the North. I wondered how he fared. I thought about the process of describing the Appalachian migrant and defining his needs against what I knew and did not know about my grandfather. I thought about my own absorption of Appalachian traditions and culture and my own long “migration” path that turned me into an “outsider” of my geography.

I recollected my own goings and comings and the patterns and traditions that I thought were unique and that held resonance with the patterns seen in the Giffin report. I thought about the current political tribalism that so readily identifies those for “us” and against “us”. I mused about the current state of the nation and measured that against the turmoil I have seen characterized in the political attention paid to Appalachia and Appalachians. I have learned that “going back” is sometimes painful, and sometimes joyful. I have learned to question my “Appalachianess” and to treasure it and distance myself from it when it centers on the darker side of human nature.

What is lost and what is gained from all the coming and going from our places of origin? What does it mean to have an identity? Are we born with identity? Is it enough just to be a part of humanity in this world of branding? Our labels used to be on the inside. We had style, not fashion, or the even more sinister, fad. As Appalachian born have we been co-opted? Will the current identity crisis only be a fad defined by the J.D. Vances of the world? Our problem is not in the symbol but in the semiotics.

In giving this coming and going a deep thought, I remembered what I read in a favorite book by Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, as he watched his rural countryside being destroyed by manufacturing and railroads.

“It is not the known, but the knowable community: A selected society in a selected point of view.”

I did not go and come back. I am constantly going and coming back and going and selecting my point of view.

SEE:

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Going and Coming Back I

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Stones, More Stones and Scalloped Potatoes

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DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH
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STONES, MORE STONES AND SCALLOPED POTATOES

TAGS: DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Stones, More Stones and Scalloped Potatoes; Pine Mountain Settlement School; Harlan County, KY; stones; scalloped potatoes; rocks; agriculture; farms; farming; foodways; cooking; Raven’s Rock; limestone; geology; lime; lime burning; kilns; quick lime; Perry County; accidents; horses; horseback riding; doctors; Dr. Alfreda Withington;

On June 8, 1920 Katherine Pettit wrote to Martha Van Meter, a nurse at the Line Fork Settlement, requesting her to purchase some grey shambray so she could mount her paper maps and preserve them. She goes on to ask Miss Van Meter “How are you on library and office work and filing and such things or do you rather dig and pile rocks as I do?” Miss Van Meter’s response is not known but the exchange suggests that rocks were a constant measure of how one approached work at Pine Mountain. The memo also signals Pettit’s deep engagement with the land and its geography and geology.

ROCKS AND THE PINE MOUNTAIN RANGE

The geology of Pine Mountain is very complex. But one component is much in evidence. That is the stone. Limestone, conglomerate, shale, shist, coal, and sandstone are in abundance. From the bothersome creek boulders to the giant Rebel’s Rock, or the beautiful Raven’s Rock arch, stones in the region can charm and confound.

Kendall Bassett Photograph Album, c. 1928-1929. [pmss001_bas001.jpg]

BURNING STONES – LIMESTONE AND LIME KILNS

One stone in plentiful supply in the Pine Mountain geology is limestone. Limestone is in rich supply in the valley of Pine Mountain. Often limestones and other stones were troublesome and were carried from the fields where they had troubled the plow. But some stones could be a gift. Limestone, for example, was a gift to the soil and to the farmer. Limestone is a stone that can be burned. But unlike coal, limestone, when burned, produces rich by-products. The richest of these by-products is known appropriately as “lime.” It is an important nutrient for many crops in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and helps to neutralize the soil’s acidity.

While the burning of limestone for lime has consumed considerable forest throughout history, it is still well-known as a boost for tired soil. Today packaged in various fertilizers, it continues to be added to the soil to support crops and enhance grazing land. Before the importation of commercial fertilizers, however, lime was wrested from the stones of the surrounding mountains.

The history of lime-kilns goes far back in the history of the world and no doubt the practice came to the New World with our earliest ancestors and settlers. Until the advent of commercial fertilizers, the production of lime through lime kilns (the burning of limestone) was common throughout much of rural America. It was, however, not so common deep in the small valleys in Appalachia. The practice of burning limestone for fertilizer, according to some, was a practice that Pine Mountain Settlement brought to many in the local farming population, though the practice of adding lime was in practice before the School was founded.

The so-called “lime cycle” starts with the stone — technically known as calcium carbonate and carries the chemical compound symbols of CaCO3. The limestone is stacked over a fire fueled by wood or coal and layers of limestone and fuel are then alternated to create a sizable pile that will burn for 10 days or more. This “pile” generally reaches temperatures in excess of 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat from the fire cooks off the carbon dioxide, CO2, and leaves a rich residue of carbonates (calcium oxide, CaO). This calcium oxide, also known as “quick lime” can then be applied directly to the soil, or better, can be mixed with water to de-acidify the soil.

Building the llime-kiln 23_campus_work_052

Stacking the lime-kiln 23_campus_work_050

The lime-kiln fired-up and producing lime for farm land 23_campus_work_051

Quick lime can also be used to make “white wash,” an insect retardant “paint” often seen on the base of trees, or on fences or around the base of wooden structures in early Appalachian homesteads. Even much later, well into the 1950’s and 1960’s, homes sported trees with their bases white-washed or old tires painted white and filled with flowers or foundation stones supporting a home, carefully painted white. An important early use was hygienic. Lime was a key additive used to keep insects and disease at bay in the many privies of the Appalachians. Both lime and wood ash with its high concentration of lye were also used as alternative disease retardants in the privy. Today, lime is still used in water treatment and sewage treatment along with ferrous sulfate.

When quick lime is mixed with other additives, it can also be a key ingredient to strengthen concrete or added to stucco for the same purpose and for its pure white nature. It can bolster or build strong walls or can be used in ‘pointing’ stonework. Much of the concrete at the school used some local lime in the concrete mix. Today, the practice of burning lime has been replaced by commercial lime that may be purchased in fertilizer mixes and other commercial amalgams. The forest can be heard celebrating this turn toward commercial lime.

Analyzing and creating some of the early pointing concrete is an art. Pine Mountain has been fortunate to have Bob Yap’s good eye and deep knowledge of restoration when addressing many of the issues found in the stone foundations and sidings of many of the Pine Mountain buildings that have broken down with time. Yap’s annual workshops are some of the most exciting workshops held at PMSS. While Yap’s skills range across many restoration skills including window restoration, roof flashing, siding, fine carpentry, and so much more, he also addresses the vital skill or re-pointing rockwork. See the Pine Mountain schedule of events and workshops for dates the next series of restoration workshops.

: Old Log foundation. [rockwork_067_oldlog_foundation.jpg]

: Old Log step. [rockwork_066_oldlog_step.jpg]

: Old Log chimney. [rockwork_065_oldlog_chimney_detail.jpg]

STONES AND MORE STONES

Stones in the Pine Mountain valley are everywhere present. They fill stream beds, sometimes tumble down mountains, pose major obstacles in the construction of roads and homes, or provide the central building material of the same. They are rockwalls, laid dry-stacked one on the other and stone mantles above the stone fireplace. They mark the well-traveled paths around the campus. They hide the infrequent copperhead snake and the quick-witted “red-britches” ground squirrel. Stones are in evidence at every turn at the School and they are still being added to the landscape in the dry stack workshops that have now become an annual offering at the School.

From Mary Rockwell Hook Album. [hook_album_2blk__036]

But, there is a difference between “cliffs”, “rocks” and “stones”.

Stone at the School can be found in flagstone walks and simple stream stepping stones. Rocks are often referred to as residing deep in the woods, where they are natural monuments with trillium tops and gentle fern and lichen-laced sides. They are places to sit for a stream-side picnic or a personal reverie. At Pine Mountain, almost no one is without a stone — or some affection for a “rock.” The Playground rock beside Isaac’s Creek is one of the most iconic rocks at the School. The large rock (no one calls it a stone) is nearly encased in the root of a giant poplar tree and provides many nooks to play or sit, or cut hair.

2457 Clyde Blanton and August Angel cutting hair at large poplar on playground, 1930s. [IX_students_09_2457_001.jpg]

: Mules and two women workers on mule-back with man walking in rocky rail-fenced lot. [X_099_workers_2486_mod.jpg]

: Woman seated on a mule next to mounting rock and boy assistant. Note the fur around her neck. Mounting stone was just opposite Big Log. [X_099_workers_2527b_mod.jpg]

: Maya Sudo Album: Maya seated on large rock. [sudo_album_051b_mod.jpg]

: Medical Settlement, Big Laurel. Path, steps and coal-bucket. [nesb_007_mod.jpg]

: “At Jack’s Gap. A group of 9 young men.” Kendall Bassett Photograph Album, c. 1928-29. [pmss001_bas012.jpg]

: Students, musicians. Katherine Pettit Album I. [pettit_27_003.jpg]

: Mattie Ayers Hayes and Ruth Creech at Jack’s Gap. [VI_51_friends_neighbors_1722x_mod.jpg]

: Board of Trustees seated on the steps at Boy’s House, 2007. [2007_board_001.jpg]

: Katherine Pettit Album I. [pettit_26_003.jpg]

: Former BOT member Chad Berry on a PMSS boulders. [P1040297.jpg]

: Boys House stone stairs to first level of building.

: Building stone wall. VII 63 Life Work Maintenance, Farm, Grounds.

: Rock bench in front of Laurel House II. rockwork_027_laurelhouse_bench_flagstone

: Capturing a snapping turtle in Greasy Creek. VI-51 – 1627.

The stone steps of Boy’s House have long been a favorite photography venue for Board pictures, students, and solitary musing. A special stone pulled from the steps of the Creech cabin was crafted by Andy Dorsky, a talented stone carver, into a seat where visitors may view the cabin.

POTATOES AND ROCKS

Not all rocks are stones. Potatoes were a popular crop in the mountains, but rocks and potatoes do battle in the field. It is difficult to grow potatoes in rocky fields, thus all workers took on the task of clearing the fields of rocks and turning them into construction stones:

“Another piece of economy has been the application of the two-birds-with-one-stone theory to the loose stones on our cultivable ground. We have secured building material for two sanitary closets and a fine tool house by gathering wagon loads of obstructive stone from our potato fields. As to rocks, we still have more worlds to conquer and we shall use them for building and retaining walls, paving, and roads.”

Nov. 14, 1914, Letter to Friends from Ethel de Long

DRY STACK CONSTRUCTION AND SCALLOPED POTATOES

In recent years Pine Mountain has held several workshops in dry-stack wall construction. The sinuous wall along the road from the Office to the Industrial Building (Plant Center) is a good example of the work of dry-stacking.

Stone wall along road from Office to Industrial Building. [P1050413.jpg]

While it may be a stretch to compare stacking potato slices to something like stacking a dry wall, the art of stacking can make all the difference in a random pile of rock and a random pile of potatoes. Both can become an aesthetic work of art, or a tumbling pile of mush.

Dry-stack rock work was a workshop offered at the School and it can be a valuable skill for both a gardener or a cook. Both take a good eye! Dry-stack rock work may be seen throughout the School campus. Many of the walls are early drystack, but many are also the new and repaired work of the dry stack crews in training. A recent preservation workshop that re-built the wall just east of the Office were possibly treated to a meal with scalloped potatoes. It is not known if the masons were rewarded with the scalloped potatoes, but the following recipe is one drawn from the records of the School and would go well with a day of dry stacking.

SCALLOPED POTATOES

Scalloped potatoes? They actually have much in common with stacked stones. Potatoes are often what cause a stone to be moved, removed, stacked, broken up, hated or other actionable scenarios. Like dry stacked walls, scalloped potatoes are laid into the pan one slice on top of the other. In the kitchen the idea is “light-weight” but in the field, it is an exercise in heavy lifting.

SCALLOPED POTATOES

3   LB potatoes
4   T butter
4   T flour
2 t salt
1/4 t pepper
2 cups milk

Pare and dice potatoes and put in a buttered baking dish, sprinkling each layer lightly with the flour, salt, and pepper. Pour milk and melted butter over the potatoes. Cover, bake in moderate oven for 60 to 90 minutes.

Recipe in The Pine Cone, May 1935

GALLERY OF STONEWORK AT PMSS see ROCKWORK

Stones were life-long labor for farmers at the School as well as in the community farms and gardens. Some areas were more troublesome than others. The barnyard seen here was slow to be cleared of these troublesome partners of most mountain soils. But when “clearing” was completed, the stones were ordered into a rough paving behind and in front of the barn where the mud and muck was an ever-present nuisance.

Barn. Early construction with stones littering yard. [II_7_barn_281.jpg]

LIke the barn, other locations benefitted from the rearrangement of stones. Stones were often an advantage when they were re-arranged and sometimes even if they were not. Before they were used as paving stones in the barnyard where the soft earth could quickly become mired with manure and mud, the native stones, though lacking organization, kept the yard drained and the feet of livestock sore but dry.

: “Ayrshire Herd 1948.” Barn and silo in background. [nace_II_album_041.jpg]

: Boy and wheelbarrow and stone-paved barnyard. [II_7_barn_275.jpg]

HORSES AND ROCKY ROADS, TRAILS AND PATHS

The stories of negotiating rocky streambeds on the backs of horses or in wagons abound in the Pine Mountain Valley. Steep mountain slopes and laurel thickets offered poor trails and often the thoroughfares were the streambeds. One story stands out in the myriad of tales of rocky-stream mishaps. This tale of the fall of Dr. Alfreda Withington on a dark night medical call is particularly memorable. In her own words from her autobiography, Mine Eyes Have Seen (E.P.Dutton & Company, 1941) she describes the 1926 accident that began when she was called to treat a child who had been badly burned. Dr. Withington had stayed the night with the family. As she started the next day on the long trip back to the Medical Settlement at Big Laurel by horseback she had what she described as “bad luck.”

It was the next day when I was returning alone from this visit, that bad luck overtook me. As Maud [the horse] was going downhill she stumbled on a rock, falling and hurling me straight over her head, so that I struck almost squarely on my face. I remember the sensation of hurtling through the air and hearing a crash. Then there was a blank

A mountain woman was standing over me when I came to. I had an awareness that something was wrong; putting my hand to my nose felt it crunch, and it was bleeding terribly. I told the woman to give me my kit, and lying there I manipulated the grating bones, straightened them, and poked some gauze up my nostrils. Though faint from loss of blood there was nothing for me to do but remount and ride the four miles home.

The next day my face was swollen beyond recognition. I rode thirteen miles more to the railroad and took the night train for Louisville to consult a specialist. He said I could be thankful indeed that my malar bones were not smashed; a stiff hat saved them.

“What I do every Friday. M.K.. [Marian Kingman] Along Grease [sic] Creek, Pine Mountain, Ky.” [kingman_098a.jpg]

Dr. Withington’s tale was repeated many times over by staff at Pine Mountain and the community families whose only roadways were streambeds and rocky hillsides. Most could identify with her “bad luck” as they had either experienced it or knew someone who had. Dr. Withington was 65 years old when her accident occurred. She was slowed down for a while but she continued to ride in streambeds and along narrow ledges above streams in order to serve the many families needing medical attention for many more years. She left the stones of the Kentucky mountains in 1931, finally retiring at the age of 70,

SCENIC ROCKS AND HIGH PLACES

Indian Rock, Rebel’s Rock, Raven’s Rock, arches,. Sandstone cave…..

: Celia Cathcart seated on rock at Jack’s Gap, above PMSS. [hook_album_2blk__034.jpg]

: Students on cliff at Jack’s Gap on top of Pine Mountain. [kingman_037b.jpg]

: Katherine True Album: “E.K.R. [Enid K. Rutledge] Jack’s Gap.” [pmss_tru076.jpg]

: Rebel’s Rock. [cobb_alice_019.jpg]

: 0067b P. Roettinger Album. “Great Rock at the top of Pine Mountain.” [Three people visible just past tree line in forefront.] [roe_067b.jpg]

: Jack’s Gap outing. Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_066_mod.jpg]

: Jack’s Gap. Katherine Pettit (older woman with hat to left of image) and Ethel de Long (back against pine tree) and children at Jack’s Gap, above PMSS. [X_099_workers_2524a_mod.jpg]

: Indian Rock with borders of daisies. Photo by HHW. [P1130870.jpg]

STONE SOUP

Besides scalloped potatoes, there is Stone Soup. Any soup may become “stone-soup” when a clean and dense stone is heated intensely and dropped into a soup pot. It acts like a slow cooker and it both cooks and maintains the warmth of a meal. The following is a pleasant winter stone soup made from stored and home-canned goods.

Vegetable Stone Soup

1 cubed onion, braised (or added directly to pot)
1 qt. jar of tomatoes
1 qt. jar of corn
1 qt. jar of green beans
3 cups of beef broth
1 tsp dry oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

One clean medium stone thoroughly heated. Place stone directly in soup mixture. Let cook for 1 hour. Patience. Re-heat stone, if needed. Serve with cornbread. and cold buttermilk.

To explore the many uses of stones and rocks at Pine Mountain a quick look at the built environment, of foundations, steps, walls, etc.. All will give a good overview of the value and required skills to utilize this building material. Buildings that are noteworthy for their rockwork are the Chapel, Laurel House II, and Draper Industrial Building. Rockwork, as seen in ROCKWORK at PMSS can also demonstrate some of the troublesome aspects of this medium.

PLAYING IN THE ROCKY, STONEY, BOULDER STREWN CREEK

Ann Angel Eberhardt, the other editor and voice on the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections website (there are two of us) shared the following story. Ann is a cousin, a friend, a writer and a superlative sounding-board. Her father is the hair-cutter in the photograph above. When she read this piece about stones … she felt compelled to share some of her memories among the stones of Pine Mountain. I am sure other readers will have similar memories especially of the creeks of Eastern Kentucky. I asked if I could share her memories of visiting near the right fork of Mason’s Creek in Perry County.

Your article reminds me of those times my family would regularly visit Mom’s people, the Halls, in Viper in the summers of 1940s & early 50s. We cousins would spend most days setting up little “playhouses” on the huge boulders in the creek. Each of us would have his or her own boulder (stone?) and use twigs, pebbles, stones, discarded items, and anything else we could find to create our playhouses. One cousin even directed the creek in a way to have “running water.” There was a perfectly round hole in the rocky creekbed that we called “Indian’s washbowl.” It was probably formed by eons of circling pebbles that the creek water washed into it.

Sound familiar?

Helen Hayes Wykle

ROCKWORK AT PMSS

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Going and Coming Back I

Pine Mountain Settlement School
DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH
Blog

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Going and Coming Back I

A personal reflection on Appalachian migration.

“The effect of mass migration has been the creation of radically new types of human beings: people who root themselves in ideas rather than places, in memories as much as material things; people who have been obliged to define themselves — because they are defined by others — by their otherness; people in whose deepest selves strange fusions occur, unprecedented unions between what they were and where they find themselves.”
Salman Rushdie

“It seems to me from my personal experience that there is kindness everywhere in different proportions and more goodness and tenderheartedness than we read of in the moralists.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

These may seem strange companions in a discussion of migration — Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth Barrett Browning — yet they both share an understanding of our deeper selves. They reach into the core of what makes us human regardless of our origins. Migration can tear at that core in ways we are still coming to understand. In Appalachia migration is a constant theme that runs throughout our conversations. So is the idea that others can redefine us; it makes us defensive and not just because we are perceived as “something else.” It is much more complex.

My grandfather was always on the move, going and coming from somewhere else but always returning to there —to Appalachia. He didn’t have a car. He was left to the many devices of journeying. Neither did he have a career that kept him moving up the staircase of advancement in the ways we understand advancement today. He simply moved. That was his advancement. He changed his location and with it, he changed his sense of self. Though he mined coal for much of his life, we never knew many of the other jobs he worked into and out of in his goings. But we knew him because he was always coming back.

“Papaw,” the Appalachian term of endearment, or not, — for the fathers and grandfathers of children growing up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, was always going and coming back. He kept the flow of life in the household unsteady, but he also kept it animated by expectation. When he returned, the household filled with somber but expected and at times unspoken conversations. Where did you go? What did you do? Who did you meet? What was it like living … there? Did you miss us? Silence. The silence in the house dictated by our grandmother Daisy, whom we affectionately called “Daa”, was palpable. Our questions and the non-answers often hung in the air with their weight of deep anxiety. But the silence was always temporary. When the house filled with family, with the sons, the wives, and their sons and daughters, the voices and laughter, stories filled the rooms. The memories of family, together, flowed like healing waters over all the unspoken answers to Papaw’s going and coming. Our Daa kept him in her wary view and could silence his answers with just a gaze. He had gone one too many times.

When we gathered, Daa often filled her table with fried chicken, cornbread, ham slices with red-eye gravy, fried oysters, pickles, mashed white potatoes from the garden, cole-slaw, and fried sweet potatoes — crisp with hard sugar edges. We playfully juggled for chicken legs, yearned for four-legged chickens, and made jokes about the “toot” which Daa always left on the bird. No one got enough sweet potatoes, and we rarely had room for the blackberry cobbler, but we ate it anyway. For us, coming home was a celebration of family and the wealth of the table. We, the family and the cousins, repeated this ritual many times in the early years of growing up. Our visits were frequent because we never lived far from our grandparents. We traveled to Coxton, a coal camp in Harlan County, Kentucky, where our grandparents spent most of their lives; first, as residents of the coal camp and later in a house they bought near the coal camp on the road to Evarts. Our coming and going was across the county of Harlan, or up and over Pine Mountain to the valley where my family lived, at Pine Mountain Settlement, a beautiful little community nestled between two steep mountains and beside gentle Isaacs Creek, the headwaters of the long and beautiful Kentucky River.

Papaw left home many times, but the most telling time was when he left — really left Daa and their boys. She had just been diagnosed with tuberculosis. In a coal camp, tuberculosis was held to be a slow death sentence. And she still had young boys at home — five of them. According to apocryphal tales told by cousins, Daa had told someone that Papaw, when he left, said he had to go because he did not want to stay and watch her die.

Given the common prognosis, his expectation that she would die was not unrealistic, many tuberculosis cases in the camps ended in death, but it was cruel to have said it out loud. Daa had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. During those years many tuberculin cases ended badly. But, this going away seemed most cruel if that was what he said, and if that was why he left. Some of us never accepted this story, but clearly, Daa never forgave Papaw for his thoughtless words, whatever was said, and silence often sat in the house like a deep fog when the two were together. If he said all those things, it did not enter into his grandkids ‘ heads as cruel as it now sounds. We could not get enough of his tall tales. His awful prognosis for Daa did not come through in his stories and his love of his grandchildren. Both grandparents, it seemed, feared being alone in the later years of their lives. Whether it was fear of being alone, or the threats of the labor wars in the mining camps that had led to his departure, Papaw left during the strike years of the 1930s. These were the troubled years that brought silence to later conversations. Daa, even in her anger, filled up those years with empty places that were only grasped when reading family letters and the snippets of stories shared by the sons. But, during those years, the family held together. Pine Mountain Settlement was part of that glue. Daa was angry but pragmatic. Her sons were resolute and creative. They never gave up trying to entice him back home. Daa was clever, and she found ways to carve out pieces of her dreams. It all would finally work out she believed.

The 1930s in Harlan County were not easy years, with strikes and union unrest, and violence. Daa’s “disease” could easily have been fatal, and so could so many other diseases of the day. A random bullet could have instantly broken the tight bonds of mother and children. Bad things happened, but they could have been much worse. In many ways, Papaw’s prognosis was just as stark as that of Daa. Black lung ended the lives of most miners, and the unpredictable cave-in of a deep mine could crush the life from a man in an instant. Union thugs could target whomever they did not like, and disease could randomly kill anyone. When Papaw left to take jobs in Detroit and the industrial north, or to Colorado, or wherever he went in his mysterious departures, I always believed that he knew he was saving his life and the life of the family. The industrial factories had their own labor strife and workplace dangers, but dying was not generally a common outcome in Pawpaw’s mind. When he left, I am sure he aimed to be lucky for later.

But Daa, with her lung disease, her tuberculosis, needed luck right away. Dr. Clark Bailey, a doctor in the town of Harlan, Kentucky and a Pine Mountain Board of Trustees member, who had diagnosed her disease early on, had found her a sanatorium in Louisville where she could possibly be cured. Dr. Bailey learned of an experimental treatment of the deadly disease in the Louisville program. Through Dr. Bailey, she had also learned about Pine Mountain Settlement School, a progressive and affordable boarding school for mountain children, and with his help, she started the process of enrolling her sons. Though Daa had only an eighth-grade education, she had been called on from time to time to teach in the coal camp school and later served as postmistress. She knew the value of an education, and she aimed for schooling for her sons.

When she learned from Dr. Bailey of the Pine Mountain program and that the sons could earn their education through a work program, she planted the seed of that idea in her sons. The older sons could pay their way through work and also earn money in the summer to help pay for their younger brothers and, later, perhaps, save funds for their mother’s care. The plan, as it turned out, was a good one and Daa’s tuberculosis was healed, the boys went to school, and Papaw was for a time not deep inside a mine. But, the wound of abandonment, the going away and Papaw’s long migration history, was not so easily healed.

WAR AND MIGRATION

In the mountains of Appalachia, wars also created migrants in the sense that many young men left the mountains and never returned, or if they did return, they carried with them the changes wrought by new and brutal experience but often romantic tales of far-off battles in far-off places. Papaw’s brother fought in the Boxer Rebellion and also in the Spanish American War and when he returned he brought the romance of far-away places. All but two of Daa’s five sons fought in WWII. One of the two sons died from a coal camp disease — chronic diarrhea. Another became a farmer. Daa cried when her sons went to war but her “babies”, as she called them even into adulthood, went anyway. Going to war was a noble and necessary act for the country and the sons adopted those noble ideals. They took on the journey to war with relish and looked forward to the chance to travel, to adventure and to do something that would stamp them with the noble entry into manhood.

: John Hayes – Army Recruitment notice 1

: John Hayes Army Recruitment notice 2

But not all noble ideals end well. When Uncle Silven, Daa’s oldest son went to fight in France, he returned to the mountains, in a coffin nearly five months after his death. His service was lauded throughout the community and within the family and by his wife, Alline. His body returned from the distant and foreign war to the war being waged in the coal camps as mines ramped up to support the war effort. His death filled the house with grief. His coming back brought foreign lands to the mountain family, and all the myths of exotic lands exploded with his death.

Silven’s story has been repeated many times over by Appalachian families and their mountain sons. The heroes, the wounded, and the families of the killed in action, like Daa’s family, shared how they were so proud of their heroes as they filled the rooms with tears. Silvan had been missing in action, and throughout the long five months it took to determine his fatal end, Daa wrote stacks of letters. When his death was confirmed, she shed tears of relief and of grief. Daa’s family and other mountain families then came face to face with another kind of tangled emotion, that of displacement.

Hidden behind the pride and the grief that war brings, was a growing distrust in the minds of some; a great fear of going away and the dangers it carried. Noble or not, the scars of displacement, of leaving home, were deep in the mental fabric of many Appalachian families. Who they were before the war and where the families found themselves following the war, were not the same.

: Silven Hayes. Mother’s Day Card, cover. [hay0004a]

: Silven Hayes Mother’s Day Card, Inside. [hay0004b]

When Uncle Silven went away, he went, not for family, but for some larger community, the nation, freedom, a cause, that we knew was somehow ours as well. We knew we also shared in his death because he fought for us, but we knew that his death was among many noble deaths and that we should be proud. We also knew that his going away had killed him. It was a going, a departure on two levels of our imagination and understanding. The soldiers who went to war and who came back either dead or alive created a community, a neighborly, a psychic and an emotional displacement in families.

When Silven’s body came back home, the conversations in our family and those families who had experienced similar losses turned. Daa’s other sons, her “babies,” were now determined to go to war, to also fight in the war. Daa’s fears were palpable all around her. She talked of nothing but their safe return until they were all back home. Her mind during those years was as displaced as a migrant’s must be. Her neighbors and our neighbors and their neighbors went to war, and the conversations revolved around the places of those war’s battles — past and future. Men sat on crates in front of the local post office and told tales of wars — past and future. The Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, and WWI. It was those conversations that prepared the next generations for war, for the long journey to some foreign country where, like Achilles, they would challenge an unknown enemy. It was not remarkable that my brother and my cousins, my friends went into the military to prepare for future wars. Later, the conversations around Daa’s table were ever more expansive as conservations began to “migrate” toward the wars in the world. We all became experts on the subject of war and the “enemy” and foreign lands.

While the elderly grieved war’s loss and the young stood lonely and confused on the edge of that large landscape of death and destruction, and noble causes, we all followed the conversations with them in our romantic notions. Later, when my brother went to war in Viet Nam and survived his many supply flights and sorties into Da Nang airbase, we stopped holding our breath and proudly watched him advance in his military career. Yet, we still understood that we were preparing and training for the next war and that war and migration were joined in creating new ideas and new places where those ideas would grow, but also where men die. It was a painful growth. We knew that what we were and what we would become was somehow tied to the outcome of wars and displacement — and migration. As Daa’s grandchildren grew up, as we grew up, the coming and going to Daa’s house seemed to grow, as well. Transportation changed, and travel became easier. Still, we always carried the memory that going was a kind of war that never ends and that coming back would have an end — could be the end — a finitude.

Our family continued to gather after the war, in the times of peace between the wars. In the 1950s we still gathered around the dinner table to tell stories. It remains a time of my best memories of going and coming back. The fried chicken was still shared with tall tales of the earlier war in the South Pacific, Navy training, guns, ships, airplanes, the sandy beaches of the Solomon Islands, the training for the Navy, and bravery. The boys waited for the stories with the eagerness of juveniles looking for heroes, and adolescents looking for the crisp edges of fried sweet potatoes. The girls listened with polite reverence, often admiration, and some sorrow — at least this one did.

When we were very young the stories lingered in our heads, and we went home and got our play guns and loaded them with caps and shot each other in mock battles of cowboys and Indians. We tuned our radios to the Lone Ranger and the Hi-Ho of Silver. I know we all thought of Silven in his casket, but it still did not stop us from romanticizing war and playing with guns. My brother and I were young and the Viet Nam war and his fatal air crash on Mt. Rainier were thirty years or more away. I had not yet migrated to California but my brother was soon in Utah majoring in aeronautical engineering and chasing forest fires in old Navy planes. We both still practiced the ritual of going back home every chance we got. Strange, the physical power of stories and the ritual of coming back. Neither of us could think of never going back.

Early on, the conversations of war had filled the imaginations of all the young-uns at our family table and those conversations had gradually given more meaning and nuance to the idea of going and coming back. Our going had punched a hole in the fabric of our isolation. As we grew, the coming back of our family members had made many of us wonder what was beyond the small world of our goings and coming back across a county, a mountain, a country, a world. The fragile fabric of family, forever held tightly together by the conversations across Daa’s extraordinary table. While we knew the lives that were ripped apart by war and the stories we heard, we then imagined and we then lived pieces of those family moments. As our younger generation aged, and our coming back to share stories and to listen to the voices of our relatives sometimes left us insecure, excited us, educated us, it prepared us for our own adventures to come. As we got older, we started to find that the stories sometimes conflicted with our growing understanding of the world and our loyalties to people and place. The stories, old and new gave us restless ideas. The coming and going and all the tales spun from those brief migrations fractured some of our loyalties and made some stronger. Our stories unsettled us just as surely as did our physical departures into our multiple worlds.

In my mind, I knew that my own migration and the migrations prompted by the war years of WWII had some common threads. The early war years were times of massive going and coming back for many families like ours in the Appalachians and across the country. The displacements were upending and made our younger generation restless. Going meant that our lives were fragile but it also meant we were brave. It meant that some of us would die in faraway places and some would come back with their mighty tales of adventure. But we all migrated. We a left “home”. Some near and some far. Our family, like so many others, was pushed and then pulled back time and again.

Papaw did not fight in any war, but war had raised the mystery of the going and coming back of Papaw to another level. It had made travel mysterious and set the imagination in flight. Now older, I hunger for new tales and new outcomes. I still want to know the adventures of Papaw while he was away. I still want to travel….. to go away and come back filled with stories. Now, I still want to hear the spirit of adventure in his tales like those we heard from the Uncles. But the memory of the gaze of my grandmother and the tension around the dinner table that always froze those conversations haunts me and gives the going a weight that I cannot fully understand or shake off.

Papaw’s stories of what he did in his personal war were never fully told by him. He came back, not as a hero, but as one who left his family behind. He did not have the stories to give honor to his departure or his return. His valor in coming back was never celebrated. But, I have never doubted its valor on another level. In some sense, he never came back because his migration had been a permanent fracture with Daa, but he came back for family. He came back before he ever started — to a place where he was not welcomed. His migration was the migration of an idea. He held fast to his idea that a better life was out there. Daa was firmly rooted in place. It was the ultimate battle of going and coming back. I like to believe that his going away was brave, but his return was heroic.

The icy stare of our loving Daa, our powerful grandmother, ended many of my grandfather’s stories before they began. Anything that might give credence to “That Man” and his adventures was censored by Daa. The going and coming back of Papaw would remain a mystery and that was that. For the grandchildren, Papaw was imaginary travel writ large. His untold stories of goings and comings would remain mysterious and compelling. Papaw’s life was, for me, a grand idea. It was the idea of a “better life”. Daa’s life was anchored to one place to which everything returned. That was her “better life.” Now I deeply believe that a “better life” is our own.

Many, many families in Appalachia have stories that revolve around going and coming back and are fueled by dreams of a “better life.” My family story is only one. War certainly filled many conversations in the cyclical migrations that constitute war’s outcomes. But strangely, it was the going of Papaw that pulled most strongly on my imagination. Many Appalachian fathers went away alone. It was not uncommon. But, a more common way of going was the whole family that packed up and went away together. It is the kind of going where place is abandoned. This going and coming back of Papaw’s mysterious travel — somewhere in the North, was the journey that was so very hard for many Appalachian families to process. It was a journey not to exotic places like Iwo Jima or France or the jungles of Batan. It was to Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago and Detroit, and other centers of industrial production. It was this form of migration that was clearly a going — that took families and individuals from Appalachia away from the “home-place” and constructed the fabric of what we generally consider as the Appalachian family migration. It fractured many families or it made them stronger.

Today migrant families are spread throughout the world. What some of these migrant families shared with Papaw was not the journey itself, but a perception of a lack of responsibility to a place. Going North when the mines failed was a journey of faith as much as it was a journey of necessity. But the journey to an urban environment puzzled those who stayed behind. To not have land to work, to not pull your existence from inside the earth, to own your own earth, was to lack responsibility. The shift in lifestyle that came with the move to urban centers during the 1930s-1940s was monumental. The life of the Appalachian family would no longer be bound to the soil, and the context of the stories around the communal table would develop toward a new framework and a new conversation of “place” and deeds.

When the migrants came home from the urban North the telling of stories now had to capture for family and relatives left behind, their new and unfamiliar landscapes. They had to introduce new words, new traditions, new lifestyles, all often so alien that their descriptions, their stories were intrusive. The stories of migrant families became stories of urban survival, of bullying, of discrimination, of playing in streets and alleys. These were poignant stories tinged with unspoken longing for corn fields and mountains and rivers — for “their people. In many ways, these new stories fractured the bonds of families unless the story could be woven into the quilt of the extended family that had stayed put.

In Harriet Arnow’s novel The Doll Maker, going was an inventory of things to be missed, a litany of stories about hoeing corn, feeding the livestock, freezing in hard winters, walking barefoot in a creek. In Arnow’s novel, the migrants took their patchwork quilts, their “crazy quilts”, their heritage seeds for a garden, a string of shucky beans, their courage …. their fatalism. When they came back, the stories changed among their own. At their core, the celebrations of return were pure fatalism. Their life as a migrant was a violent story of being ripped from nature’s familiar arms, the enfolding of mountains, and the warm bosom of the family. As a family, they had been to “war.” Coming back was often a rant against the new environment or false boasting of wealth and the excitement of cities. Migration in hard times became a mantra writ large and passed along in the rich oral tradition of Appalachia. It is the dinner at Daa’s house.

Even deeper, the going became an all too familiar series of stories told over and over by those who experienced migration or those who witnessed migration’s impact on the extended family unit. Their stories became fusions of the stories told by migrants throughout the world. Their stories were war stories as well as economic sagas. A thousand times over, their stories were at their base the stories told by migrants from Mexico, Venezuela, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, the Rohingya of Indonesia, and so many more. We are a world awash with the psychic trauma of displacement — of having to come and now having to go.

Environmental disasters have added to the displacement saga. What distinguishes the Appalachian migrant from those now filling temporary camps throughout the world is the fact that most of the world’s migrants will not have the advantage of going back. War has obliterated “home. Today’s immigrats will become immigrants in a state of permanent displacement. Their displacement is our terror, the terror of never coming home. It is millions of stories with no family table to return to.

For every family going to Cincinnati, to any new city, to find work, to survive, to build a future, there are hundreds more on the move throughout the world. But, migration is not always immigration; a going and staying. Like Papaw’s going, migration is most like a yo-yo, – a constant motion of families. In Appalachia, going is often a continuous loop of going and coming back but it is bound together by a return to a common culture. For most of the Appalachian migrants, the departure was not a permanent exile — it was deeply believed to be temporary. The migration and the new place were malleable, and so were the people to some degree. For Appalachian families, the migration was a constant recreation of communities of support balanced against the need to stay connected to home, to the rural familiar. Coming back, in some cases, could take years, as it did in my case from far across the country. Or, coming back could be only the old stories around a new and permanent table in the new “home.” Most times, coming back was ritualized. It was part of being a family from the Appalachian mountains. It was required.

Living as a migrant is to adapt but retain. It is in its low moments to be reminded to never “get above your raisin’ and never forget. It is foodways raised to the level of a sacrificial offering. It is barter, not money. It is the noble dream carried in the back pocket billfold and the voice of ancestors in the head. For the migrant in the city, the physical state was dirt, crime, monotony, an urban prison where the walls of tall buildings replaced mountains. For most families from Appalachia who experienced leaving for urban centers, going required a coming back … a return to the cathedral of nature and the true familiar community where the memories could be refreshed or restored. When the migrants could not soon go home again, they pulled the vision of home from their dreams and were bolstered and awash in memories of themselves at home; they sought out other like-dreamers and formed centers of Appalachian life in their new cities. Today’s migrants from all over the world are like those Appalachian dreamers. In its essence, it is us all. Migration is not about “other.” It is about us.

SEE:

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Coming Back and Going Some More

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH English Country Dancing at Pine Mountain Settlement

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Blog: DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH

TAGS: English Country Dancing, Pine Mountain Settlement School, Harlan County, Kentucky, dancing, recreation, folk dancing, set running, party games, Kentucky Running Set, Cecil Sharp, Maude Karpeles, Phil Jamison, Dorothy Bolles, Abby Winch Christensen, Dorothy Nace, Mary Rogers, Berea College Country Dancers, Berea College, Arthur Dodd, Glyn Morris,

ENGLISH COUNTRY DANCING
AT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

May Day 1949. Drawing by Mary Rogers

English Country Dance crept into the Pine Mountain Valley like the bright green of Spring time creeps up the North flank of the mountain — slowly. Dance in the valley was not unknown in the first decades of the twentieth century, but the gentility of English Country Dance was unknown. Anywhere there was a large community gathering in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky there were “parties” and “party games” and often “set-running.” Churches were largely opposed to “dancing” but “party games” were often accepted. In the more strict religious sects, dance had always been forbidden. Dancing was seen as the work of the devil, but so was moonshine, but never guns.

In the Pine Mountain Valley, many in the community had been “dancing” most of their lives. The dance most favored was one later called the Kentucky Running Set. It was a fast-paced, vigorous and lengthy series of maneuvers which were rhythmically called out by a leader. According to Phil Jamison, in his 2015 book, Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance, pp.72-73, the idea of a “Running Set” is not as intuitive as it seems. A noted North Carolina dance historian, dancer and set caller, Jamison suggests that the term “set” has several definitions.

In the seventeenth century, for example, a “set” was used to describe a series of simple steps in place to one’s partner, as in the action to “set” to a partner before turning. Jamison. however, also conjectures that Karpeles and Sharp conflated the meaning with another “set”, that of a composition of figures, such as Jamison’s suggestion, “a ‘set of Quadrilles.'” Further, French dances that had many parts were referred to as “sets”. This last description of a set given by Jamison, suggests to him that the use of the term is associated with the idea of a Quadrille “set” and this seems to be confirmed in the appearance of the term and idea in the Southern Appalachians. Strengthening his argument for a French connection with the Quadrille, he quotes Karpeles from an article, “Some Additional Figures for Set Running,” In the Journal of the English Folk Dance Society 2, no. 3 (1930): 39-50.

“It is very probable that the word ‘set’ implies a ‘set of figures,’ in the way that it is customary to speak of a ‘set of Quadrilles.'”

As for “running” Jamison conjectures that it has its origins in Scotland. In dances, particularly the reel, where “running a set” was a common description of the dance pattern.

It was this “dance,” this running of sets, that surprised and charmed one of the world’s leading instructors of English Country Dance when he first viewed it at Pine Mountain. The dance form had been observed by visitors to the School and commented on by the staff when visiting on fundraising trips to the North East. And when Cecil Sharp came to America, it was recommended by English Country Dance lovers in the North East that Sharp come listen to the ballad singers and see what the remote people in Eastern Kentucky had retained of old English forms of entertainment in song and dance. Pine Mountain gave Cecil Sharp a gift, and Cecil Sharp left a gift for the School — English Country Dancing.

Cecil Sharp‘s discoveries at the School were well described in his book. English folk songs from the southern Appalachians, collected by Cecil J. Sharp; comprising two hundred and seventy-four songs and ballads with nine hundred and sixty-eight tunes, including thirty-nine tunes contributed by Olive Dame Campbell, edited by Maud Karpeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932. The book, dedicated to William Creech, the donor of the land for the Pine Mountain Settlement School remains a testimony of a mutual fondness for the culture of the Southern Appalachians. When Cecil Sharp came to the School along with his secretary, Maud Karpeles, he witnessed a joyful and energetic community of set runners and when he left, he set a tradition for the inclusion of English Country Dancing in annual celebrations and in the school’s educational program.

GALLERY I: DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH English Country Dancing at PMSS

: Dancing in the Cabbage Patch

: Big Laurel school and circle dance. Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_042_mod.jpg]

: Angela Melville Album II – Part VI. Folk dancing. [melv_ii_album_320x_alt]

: “Gathering Peascods,” c. 1920s

: Big Laurel School; dancing on the playground. VI-51 – 1625.

: Maya Sudo Album: “Sword Dancers; Boy’s House”. 016

: May Day dancing on the Playground. cobb_alice_051

: “May Day.” dancing [kingman_074a]

: “May Day.” Kentucky Running Set ? [kingman_088c]

: “May Day.” Kentucky Running Set? [kingman_088d]

: “May Day.” Circle dance on playground. [kingman_088a.jpg]

: “Set running.” Ben Turner (in white; far right, Glyn Morris; seated, Miss Dorothy Bolles and Miss Evelyn Wells. Kentucky Running Set, 1934. [boarding_school_767a.jpg]

: Big Log. Front facade with children dancing. [II_08_big_log_329d.jpg]

: 1945 May Day on the Dancing Green with Morris dancers. Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_053_mod.jpg]

: 1945 May Day on the Dancing Green. Students and “Handkerchief Dance.” Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_051_mod.jpg]

: The Hobby Horse – Eli Ison, May 1946, Morris Dance] [nace_1_021c.jpg]

: “Glorishears” Morris Dance — 1946. Shirley Holbrook and Delores Scott in lead. [nace_1_021a.jpg]

: Joe Bramlett Album – Dancing on the May Day Green. [bram_-49.jpg]

: Dancing Green. View of dancers. at May Day, c. 1940s. [II_11-02_dancing_green_0373a-2.jpg]

: Dancing Green. Gathering for May Day. [II_11-02_dancing_green_0373b.jpg]

: Louise Fliermans, Home Economics teacher dancing with Weaver Smith of Harlan at a dance at the Country Club, 1948.

: Lutrella Baker Album. Line Fork Settlement, 1937-41. Circle dance with community at Cabin lawn. [line_fork_005c.jpg]

: “May Day 1948.” Boys and girls dancing in circle. [nace_II_album_036.jpg]

: Line Fork community, dancing during the Baker years, early 1940s. [line_fork_005c-1.jpg]

: 1933 Fair Day. Dancing on the Playground near Burkham School House II. [III_campus_life_0767a]

: 1933 Fair Day. Dancing on the Playground near Burkham School House II. [III_campus_life_078]

: “May Day.” Set-running ? [kingman_088b]

: 1940s Dancing Green. Dancing during May Day, c. 1940s. [II_11-02_dancing_green_0374.jpg]

: “May Day 1948.” Boys and girls dancing in circle. [nace_II_album_036.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_05_006.jpg]

: Joe Bramlett Album – Dancing on the green: (?) and Bonnie Faye Reynolds (?). (Photo by Arthur Dodd) [bram_-43.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_05_005.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_05_004.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_05_003.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_05_002.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_05_001.jpg]

: “Shepherd’s Hay Jig – James Centers.” May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_04_005.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_04_004.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_04_003.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_04_002.jpg]

: May Day on the Dancing Green, 1941. [bishop_04_001.jpg]

: 1945 May Day on the Dancing Green. Arthur W. Dodd Album.[dodd_A_052_mod.jpg]

: 1945 May Day on the Dancing Green. Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_054_mod.jpg]

: 1945 May Day on the Dancing Green. Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_054_mod.jpg]

: 1945 May Day on the Dancing Green. Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_055.jpg]

: May Day celebration. c. 1944. [dodd_A_052_mod]

: Dancing on the Dancing Green, late 1930s. [burkh_007.jpg]

: Baca Pipes dance on the Dancing Green, late 1930s.[burkh_006.jpg]

: Baca Pipes dance on the Dancing Green, late 1930s.[burkh_005.jpg]

: Sword team, 1945. [nace_1_021b.jpg]

: Morris Dancing at PMSS. [III_campus_life_0777c.jpg]

: Dieter Album – English Morris dancing. [shul_015.jpg]

: Morris Dancing at PMSS. [III_campus_life_0783.jpg]

: Sword dancing on the Dancing Green, late1930s. William Hayes (back to camera, rt.) Glyn Morris, Paul Hayes, ?.? [burkh_004.jpg]

: Sword Dancing, the forming of the star. [III_campus_life_0779a.jpg]

: May Day celebration. 1945. [dodd_A_053_mod]

: Dieter Album – Sword dancers. William Hayes, facing camera. [shul_016.jpg]

: 1945 May Day. Hobby Horse and Morris dancing on the Dancing Green. Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_050_mod.jpg]

: Folk dancing on the Dancing Green, late 1930s.[burkh_003.jpg]

: Folk dancing on the Dancing Green, late 1930s. [burkh_002.jpg]

: William and Fern Hall Hayes, dancing. [III_campus_life_0775.jpg]

: Folk dancing at Pine Mountain. [III_campus_life_0774.jpg]

: Dieter Album – Dancing on the Green. Paul Hayes facing camera. In background, Fern Hall Hayes, Joan Ayers.[shul_001.jpg]

: Dieter Album – Ruth Shuler and partner to far left. [shul_020.jpg]

: Dieter Album – Dancing on the Green. Ruth Shuler to far right. [shul_017.jpg]

: 1945 May Day on the Dancing Green. Arthur W. Dodd Album. [dodd_A_055_mod.jpg]

: Dancing. Grace Rood Album.

: Mary Rogers, drawing. Dancing. II.

: Mary Rogers, drawing. Dancing I

: Folk dancing in Laurel House II. Grace Rood Album.

: 1810c Four students dancing with Mrs. Whitaker. [ 58_Life and Work_Children and Classes_029]

: 1810 Mrs. Whitaker and two student boys dancing. [58_Life and Work_Children and Classes_026]

: 1811a Mrs. Whitaker and 7 students dancing. [58_Life and Work_Children and Classes_031]

: 1811 Mrs. Whitaker and two students dancing. [58_Life and Work_Children and Classes_030]

: 1810b Mrs. Whitaker and two students dancing with girl and boy watching. [58_Life and Work_Children and Classes_028]

: 1810a Sally Boggs, Mrs. Whitaker, and students dancing. [58_Life-and-Work_Children-and- Classes_027.jpg]

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1532

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1528

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1530a

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1527b

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1526

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” Berea

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1522

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” Berea College Country Dancers. 48_f&neigh_gather_1522a

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” Berea College Country Dancers. 48_f&neigh_gather_1521a

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather”Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” Berea College Country Dancers. _1521

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” Berea College Country Dancers. 48_f&neigh_gather_1520c

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” Berea College Country Dancers. 48_f&neigh_gather_1520

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” Berea College Country Dancers. 48_f&neigh_gather_1520a

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” Berea College Country Dancers. 48_f&neigh_gather_1520b

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.”48_f&neigh_gather_1523a

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1532a

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1531a

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1531

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1530

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1529

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1525

: “Cumberland Swapping Meeting and Berea Dancers.” 48_f&neigh_gather_1524

: 1981 Homecoming Minutes, “Dancing Party at Laurel House — ‘Black Nag.'” [1981_pmss_alum_min_007.jpg]

: 1980’s Alumni Dancing in Laurel House. Fern Hayes and William Hayes. dancing at Pine Mountain.

: 2015 Community and James Madison University get a chance to participate in a community day event. Dancing with the gentlemen from Harlan’s Challenge Academy. [P1060835.jpg]

: 2015 Community and James Madison University get a chance to participate in a community day event. Dancing with community members. [P1060849.jpg]

: 2015 James Madison University gets a chance to participate in a community day event. Dancing and dancing some more. [P1060858.jpg]

: 2015 James Madison University gets a chance to participate in a community day event. Dancing with the gentlemen from Harlan’s Challenge Academy. [P1060827.jpg]

: 2015 James Madison University gets a chance to participate in a community day event. Dancing with the gentlemen from Harlan’s Challenge Academy. [P1060828.jpg]

: Glyn Morris playing fiddle. X_100_workers_2614_mod.jpg (dup)

: May Day 1945 Program. [bishop_04_009.jpg]

: 01 May Day 1949 program (black & white image). Cover illustration by Mary Rogers. [may_day_1949_001]

Some English Country Dancers may recognize formations that readily suggest the named dance being performed. Most will not. Many times the dance forms overlap and are incorporated in a new dance with new sequences and new rhythms. Few English Country Dancers, will, however, fail to recognize the familiar names of the dances.

RECORDINGS: COUNTRY DANCE MUSIC LIST RECOMMENDED BY DOROTHY BOLLES

When Pine Mountain Settlement School was organizing its dance programs they borrowed heavily from the Boston Center music and dances. Dorothy Bolles, the link in that important chain of influence, supplied the School with a list of available music for English Country dancing.

Here is her list of “His Master’s Voice, Gramophone Records” most of which were collected by Pine Mountain or were played on the piano by Arthur Dodd and accompanied by Glyn Morris on violin or by fiddlers in the community.

: bolles_d_corr_047

: bolles_d_corr_047a

All records are 12″ and 4/6

I.D #	Titles
C 1644	Apley House Old Noll’s Jig
C 1645	Seed the Plough Pop Goes the Weasel
C 1646	The Triumph The Twenty-ninth of May
C1263	Nancy’s Fancy Tink a Tink
C1264	Flowers of Edinburgh Christchurch Bells
C 1265	Childgrove Sage Leaf
C 1266	Mr. Beaveridge’s Maggot Jack’s Maggot
C 1072	Brighton Camp The Ribbon Dance
C1073	My Lady Cullen Bonnets So Blue
C 1074	The Mary and Dorothy Haste to the Wedding
B 2954	Oaken Leaves Mage on a Cree Hey Boys Up Go We
B 2955	Newcastle Jenny Pluck Pears
B 2956	The Old Mole Shepherd’s HOliday Parson’s Farewell
B 2957	The Phoenix St. Martins
B 2958	Lady Speller Rufty Tufty The Maid Peeped Out at the Window
B 2959	The Merry Merry Milkmaids If All the World Were Paper The Black Nag
B 5071	Galopede We Won’t Go Home Till Morning
B 1370	Scotch Cap The Boatman Picking Up Sticks
B 1371	Chelsea Reach The Lady in the Dark Confess
B 1372	Argeers Broom, the Bonny Bonny Broom Oranges and Lemons
9769	Helston Furry Indian Queen
5503	Fourpence Halfpenny Farthing Lilli Burlero
5504	Epping Forest Gathering Peascods
B 1193	Three Mewt The Butterfly
B 1194	Goddesses Hudson House
5505	Picking Up Sticks Newcastle
5434	Haste to the Wedding Bonnets So Blue
5733	Hey Boys Up Go We Rufty Tufty Mage on a Cree Parsons Farewell
5734	Sellinger’s Round The Black Nag If All the World Were Paper
DB 82	Dick’s Maggot (orch.) Nonesuch
DB 84	The Fine Companion Hit and Miss The Beggar Boy Heartsease
DB 182	Oranges and Lemons Grimstock Hyde Park
DB 183	Never Love Thee More The Maid in the Moon Chestnut
	COLUMBIA (Morris Jigs and Running Set)
DB 226	Jackie to the Fair (Violin E. Avril) Old Mother Oxford (Violin E. Avril) The Fool’s Jig (Pipe and Tabor/ J. Sharp) Old Woman Tossed Up (Pipe and Tabor/ J. Sharp)
DB227	Running Set (Violin E. Avril) Ladies Pleasure (Pipe and Tabor/ J. Sharp) None So Pretty
	COLUMBIA (Sword Dances)
9800	Flamborough Kirkby Malzeard (Folk Songs)
DB ?	I Will Give My Love An Apple (Clive Carey) Oh Sally My Dear (Clive Carey) My Billy Boy (Clive Carey) The Lover’s Tasks (Clive Carey)
DB 336	A Farmer’s Son So Sweet (Annete Blackwell) As I Sat On A Sunny Bank (Annete Blackwell) Dance to Your Daddy (Annete Blackwell)

SEE:

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH English Country Dancing at Pine Mountain Settlement School

CECIL SHARP AND MAUD KARPELES VISIT TO PMSS

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH War and PMSS

Pine MountainSettlement School
Blog: Dancing in the Cabbage Patch

Pine Cone 1944 January, cover. [pine_cone_1944_8-5_001.jpg]

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH War and PMSS

Many families have carried forward the idea that Eastern Kentuckians have contributed disproportionately to enlistment, casualties, and valor in wartime. One author has noted that this idea has some roots in reality. Alice Cornett, writing in 1991 for the Baltimore Sun noted that the disproportionate number for Appalachians killed while fighting in the wars following WWI did not go unnoticed. Cornett and others have recently suggested that the large numbers of enrollees , the often large number of soldiers from Appalachia, is associated with what some have referred to as the “Sgt. York Syndrome.”

THE SGT. YORK SYNDROME

The syndrome coined by Dr. Steven Giles, a psychologist working for the Tennessee Veterans Administration Medical Center at Mountain Home, is in Dr. Giles’ view both laudatory and troubling. He notes that the syndrome is bolstered by the pervasive idea that the Appalachian soldier is a “good” soldier; that ”Appalachians make good soldiers, and the Army knows it.” This goals- congruence factor, for good or ill, has often found Appalachian soldiers at the front-line of battle and often lauded as the most heroic of soldiers in battle.

Why has Sgt. York today become a “syndrome’ of Kentucky soldiers? Sgt. Alvin Cullum York (December 13, 1887 – September 2, 1964), was a native of Pall Mall, in eastern Tennessee. By most accounts, he has been described as a hero and the quintessential soldier. A rifleman, whose bravery in battle and subsequent award of a Medal of Honor, captured the imagination of a nation. He was immortalized when his life was made into a movie in 1941. Sergeant York directed by Howard Hawks with Gary Cooper as York, was as timely, as it was motivating for many young men who viewed the film. The enrollment for WWII was growing and Sgt.

York set a standard of conduct that almost made serving in the Army a religious duty. York’s exploits which were translated to the silver screen furthered his legend and that of the Appalachian soldier. On the cusp of WWII, York, in the mind of the nation and particularly in the minds of Appalachians, Sergeant York was the model soldier and the “Sgt. York Syndrome” took roots and grew. York’s bravery and his philanthropy now known to all Appalachian young men and to their families following the Great War, became a topic of pride in the mountains and remains so today.

York’s bravery and his philanthropy now known to all Appalachian young men and to their families following the Great War became a topic of pride in the mountains and remains so today. After the release of the film, perceptions grew regarding the fearless nature of the Appalachian soldier. In fact, all the wars since the Great War which the United States has engaged have invoked the name of Sgt. York. In the Appalachian mountains, particularly when recruiters came to enlist soldiers, the name of Sgt. York was often lurking at the back of both the recruit and recruiter’s mind.

Yet, even before York, the Nation had seen large numbers of young men and women from Appalachia step eagerly forward to serve. In one Appalachian county in Kentucky, Breathitt, there were no draftees during the whole of WWI because quotas had been met and exceeded by the general enlistment of county residents.

However, all this patriotism has yielded a grim fact. Data gathered by Alice Cornett should be noted

As a percent of its population, the Appalachian region has sustained higher losses in our wars of the past 50 years than has any other section of the country. West Virginia, the only state designated as wholly in Appalachia, had the highest casualty ratio in both World War II and the Vietnam conflict.

Many of the counties in Appalachian states have seen their young men recruited, volunteered, and serving in war but the propensity to fight in wars has also been associated with the need for employment and the often biting poverty. The same Appalachian counties that sent large numbers to war were often some of the poorest counties. The numbers of Appalachian soldiers is also now matched by a disproportionate number of racial minority recruits. Thus, the Appalachians Blacks, Hispanics and other groups struggling with economic and social challenge often find military recruitment a way into careers and out of poverty. Again, the military recognized that these young men and women will “soldier on” because of their deep patriotism.

[See: http://kentuckyguard.dodlive.mil/2013/03/19/a-patriotic-clan-from-eastern-kentucky-in-the-war-to-end-all-wars-part-one/]

WWII V-Mail letter from Alice Joy Keith to August Angel, 25 May 1945. [Angel WWII_vmail_from Alice Joy Keith. [Angel-WWII_vmail_from-Alice-Joy-Keith.jpg]

PMSS AND WWI

Unidentified PMSS student.

At Pine Mountain, there are many stories regarding the School’s engagement with WWI. As students left to fight in the Great War, the staff also left their positions to fight alongside their students. The School was often challenged to fill critical staff positions as well as maintain a balanced student body. For example, when Leon Deschamps, a Belgian farmer working at Pine Mountain left to fight in WWI early in 1918, he kept in touch with the School and with the children. Deschamps served in the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe in 1917, under the command of General John J. Pershing. He was assigned as a translator (French) and in the forestry department. His presence in the battle abroad was followed with fascination by the whole School. The students regularly held cocoa and rice dinners to save money for the “Belgians in the war” effort.

In reading through the Leon Deschamps Correspondence we are reminded of the discrimination that many immigrants faced following WWI and WWII and today. As a “foreigner” Leon was one of the first members of the Pine Mountain staff to join the WWI war. Yet, he was excluded from many of the opportunities afforded job seekers when he retruned. In some cases, the discrimination came from some of the more “enlightened” educational institutions in the country, though there is little indication that Pine Mountain showed him any exclusions. His talents, determination and the enormous endorsement given by those who worked with him are well documented in his correspondence. Yet, the suspicions ran deep regarding “foreigners” following the war. in the mountains of Appalachian, largely a rural geography, it is no surprise to find see the inclusion of those who knew him that he left legends in all the institutions he touched. Not many of us can claim such legacies.

War, for most of the students at Pine Mountain Settlement, was a distant and somewhat romantic engagement until the soldiers began to return home shell-shocked, lungs destroyed by mustard gas, or, in a casket. Yet, for many staff at the School, war was already a very real experience, and one not to be romanticized.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable impacts of war on Pine Mountain staff is found in the personal narratives of those who came to the School after having served in remote corners of the world during wartime. One of the most harrowing first-hand accounts of war can be found in the staff who were impacted by front-lines of conflict. One of these conflicts, the Ottoman Turk-Armenian conflict witnessed by Dr. Ida and Rev. Robert Stapleton was particularly horrific and is well recorded in a recent book published by their granddaughter, Gretchen Rasch. The Storm of Life: A Missionary Marriage from Armenia to Appalachia, published by the Gomidas INstitute in (2016 tells of the two missionaries horrific struggle with the mass genocide of Armenians in and around Ezerum Turkey.

The Stapletons came to Kentucky in the late 1920s to serve as co-directors of Line Fork Settlement (Letcher County, Kentucky), a satellite settlement associated with the Settlement School. They were particularly well equipped to meet almost any human conflict with experience and compassion following their harrowing experiences in Turkey. The battles around moonshine and the frequent revenge killings of the Appalachians were part of their everyday life on Line Fork in the early decades of the twentieth century. It was a life they often met with humor and compassion, but even more, with understanding. Their early work with the Ottoman-Armenian conflict no doubt brought the petulance of personal and familial battles quickly into perspective.

Another staff member at the School also experienced the Ottoman Turk-Armenian conflict in a more Eastern region of Turkey. Edith Cold was stationed in Hadjin, Turkey as a school teacher for children orphaned by the ethnic war. Her letters and stories regarding the conflict that slowly engulfed the region are equally chilling and capture the severe circumstances that war brings to communities across the world. The trials of Edith Cold were captured in a series of New York Times articles that chronicled her ordeals and her incredible bravery in efforts to keep the children and the staff of the school safe from harm. As genocide ravaged the Armenian populations, workers such as Edith Cold and the Stapletons witnessed horrendous atrocities and placed themselves in harm’s way on a daily basis. Today, those echoes of brave volunteers and their harrowing continue to fill the news and speak more of the inhumanity that lurks in every conflict of border, ideology, and beliefs. The tales recounted by the Stapletons and by Edith Cold of life in Turkey in the first decades of the twentieth century were shared with students at Pine Mountain, more in their models of tolerance, support, and understanding, than in their recounting or bearing witness of war’s inhumanity. There is good evidence that they softened the edges of many hard lives in the Pine MOuntain valley and beyond.

PMSS AND WWII

During World War II the actions of war came closer to the School as communication improved and the radio brought reports of the war closer to home. Great numbers of Staff and students left to join the ranks of soldiers or became support staff to the war effort. During these years communication flowed more rapidly and frequently and the war became a real and present conflict that had little room for romanticizing. The American mind was war-focused in this second world conflict and daily informed through radio.

A “Thank you” to nurse, Grace Rood from Lester.

Of all the wars, World War II, possibly had the greatest impact on life at Pine Mountain and in the valley. Many fathers and sons left their farms in the valley to fight in the war. Many young men stopped their classes at PMSS to go fight the war in Europe and women signed on to nurses corps or to the Red Cross or to canteens in Europe to do their share in the war effort. Classes were suspended when key instructors left. Basic supplies could not be obtained for many families and money was tight. Many families could not afford even the smallest tuition. The impact of WWII on the farm was dramatic as rationing began to impact food supplies and families in the community looked to the School for more assistance in farming needs and health issues. Subsistence and rationing became uneasy partners in many families. Rationing, particularly, was a critical issue with all residential schools and particularly the food issues and family loss only compounded the national and personal crises in the Appalachians.

There are many stories related to Staff who had some family relation in either the European or the Pacific theater of war. See especially the important documentation of war efforts by soldiers in Perry County, KY, maintained by Waukesha Lowe Sammons, daughter of one of the county’s soldiers who did not return from WWII. Waukesha, a Berea College graduate, has created a comprehensive website that traces the Military Legacy of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, who served from the American Revolutionary War to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her comprehensive website covers just one eastern Kentucky county — Perry County, but it gives a vivid picture of how many wars impacted the region.

http://www.perrycountykentuckymilitarylegacy.com/

World War II in the Asian theater also directly affected the lives of many of Pine Mountain’s staff and students. For example, the expulsion of staff member Burton Rogers from Yali, the Yale in China School where he was teaching when the Japanese invaded in 1937, brought the family to Pine Mountain. His relocation is another story of severe challenge, hardship, and courage. rood_030x Burton Rogers came as School principal in 1941, and later served as the Director of the Pine Mountain Settlement School. His wartime experience was profound and prompted him to a life-time as a conscientious objector. As a member of the Quaker faith and outspoken critic of war for the remainder of his life, Burton and his wife, Mary Rogers, committed their lives to pacification. Mary had learned how to skillfully negotiate conflict when she worked in India and met the pacifist, Ghandi.

The brave and courageous contributions of two Pine Mountain Docotrs, Emma and Francis Tucker and their nurse protegee, Grace Feng Liu brought first-hand accounts to the School’s understanding of the impact of war on individuals. Their stories are remarkable. The Tucker’s heroic struggles during the Japanese invasion of China and their work to raise the standards of health in rural China equipped the couple for the rural medical work they completed at Pine Mountain. The two were at that time long past the normal retirement age. Their story of encounters with the Japanese invading forces and their escape from China when it was overrun by the Japanese, is an inspiring tale of courage and contribution that they shared with the Pine Mountain community and with the students. Grace Feng, a native chinese nurse, was brought by the Tuckers when they departed China and she came for a brief time to the School. It was at the School that she later married T.C. Liu, another Chinese migrant. The story of Grace Feng Liu and TC. Liu is a touching one and can be traced in their own words in the School’s archive. The couple returned to China following the completion of their education in America but were soon caught up in the deadly Communist regime of Mao.

GLYN MORRIS ARMY CHAPLAIN

In 1941, the School’s Director, Glyn Morris left to join the war effort as a military Chaplin and with him went a large number of young men to either enlist or take advantage of the V-12 programs that offered training and educational assistance to capable young men. The letters to staff from soldiers in WWII are important records of the history of the war years at the School, as well as the adjustments that the School made during those difficult years. See for example the Bill Blair WWII Letters and the record of Joe Glen Bramlett, two students at the School.

Another remarkable personal story is that of Frank W. “Unk” Cheney who survived the bombing of Shanghai and imprisonment by the Japanese during WWII at the Chapel prison camp. His experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese was both horrendous and productive for “Unk” who learned the Japanese language and developed an appreciation for Japanese furniture design. He demonstrated how even the most oppressive features of war can be turned to advantage. His aesthetic sensibilities and gentleness brought a different perspective of the Far East to students who had the privilege of working with him at Pine Mountain.

WWII students at PMSS.

Many students felt the call to service in both wars, but perhaps WWII had the most profound effect on Pine Mountain Settlement, as so many young men enlisted that work crews and the work-flow of the institution was dramatically affected.

The three young men to the right are typical of the pride shown by these new soldiers.

Paul Hayes, a student, and later PMSS Director, went to Berea College as part of the V-12 program and later to Duke as a recipient of the same military assistance. Paul saw duty in the Pacific. His brother John Hayes, first signed on as part of the Army Corps of Engineers and later in the regular Army, also going to the Pacific theater to fight. Silvan Hayes, the oldest brother was already in the Army in the European war and was killed in 1943 in France. Enoch C. Hall II, a PMSS student from Perry county left Pine Mountain and joined the Army and served in Hawaii. He was among the many soldiers who were witness to the opening days of WWII when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese and led to the declaration of war by the U.S. Hall’s barracks at the Honolulu air field were strafed by the Japanese in the opening days of the Pacific war. Joe Glen Bramlett, a student who served in the Army left a large visual record of his years at the School and those in the Army.

Student William David Martin left PMSS in March of 1941 to join the Navy and following his completion of duty wrote a letter to the School saying that he had earlier been overcome by “Navy fever” and would like to complete his degree at the School — which he did.

All these young men served with valor and conviction in WWII. Most came home, but some did not survive the ravages of battle. Their names were placed on a small plaque that once hung in Laurel House. Delicately inscribed and gilded, it now shows its age and has been placed in the Archive of the School.

WOMEN IN THE WARS

[**See: http://kentuckyguard.dodlive.mil/2013/03/19/a-patriotic-clan-from-eastern-kentucky-in-the-war-to-end-all-wars-part-one/#sthash.1NIycerE.dpuf]

There were no women allowed in the ranks of the military before WWI. In 1901 women were able to join the Army Nurse Corps and by 1908, women were allowed into the Navy Nurse Corps. When the US entered into WWI, the ranks swelled in number to around 250 women with approximately 15 drawn from the Appalachian region. Three of the women were from eastern Kentucky and all were graduates of Berea College’s nursing program. **

During WWII there were numerous women from eastern Kentucky and from Pine Mountain who joined the war effort. Two notable nurses who trained at Pine Mountain were Mable Mullins, from Partridge and Stella Taylor. Both young women earned commendations for their war work.

Stella Taylor

Many will agree that Mullins and Taylor made remarkable careers for themselves in WWII. Mable Mullins became a Major in the Army, a rank as high as a woman could go t the time. Stella Taylor contributed nursing services as an Army nurse and gained recognition for her work. Other nurses trained at Pine Mountain were quickly signed on to the war effort. Also, women left the School to provide services or direct support in WWII in jobs that did not require enlistment but that supported the war effort. Generally these jobs were those in industrial support, and/or canteen work.

Many young men in WWII were not drafted but were exempted in order to maintain farms and critical operations on the home-front, or, often they were exempted because they already had multiple siblings fighting in the war. William Hayes was one such student who was retained at Pine Mountain to maintain the farm while three brothers were recruited. His correspondence with his mother, his brothers and with various students who fought in the war is poignant. The sacrifice of his older brother, Silvan Hayes to the war effort in France left permanent scars on his family as the war did for so many families in Appalachia. William’s correspondence with student Bill Blair is extensive and provides a picture of a student’s course through military training and deployment during wartime. The list of enrollees in the war efforts of the 1940’s is a long one. Yet, exemption for most young men from Appalachia was not something that they welcomed during WWII just as it was not during WWI and many of the succeeding wars.

The list of enrollees in the war efforts of the 1940’s is a long one. Yet, exemption for most young men from Appalachia was not something that the men generally welcomed during WWII just as it was not welcomed during WWI and the succeeding wars. It was noble to serve for most men in the community. Within the staff workers at Pine Mountain, the story was often quite different, as many came to the School as conscientious objectors and served their time contributing to the work at the mountain settlement. Two Quakers come readily to mind: Peter Barry and Burton Rogers.

PMSS AND THE KOREAN WAR

The Korean war did not have the same impact on PMSS as did the larger WWII conflict, but it still left its mark on families in the Pine Mountain Valley. As noted by Alice Cornett’s statistical accounting of participation in that war in her 1991 Boston Sun article,

Nine percent of U.S. military forces in the Korean War were from areas of Appalachia, but 18 percent of the Medals of Honor awarded in that war went to the Appalachian soldiers. In Vietnam, they made up 8 percent of our troops and received 13 percent of the Medals of Honor.

[See: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-11-11/news/1991315046_1_appalachian-counties-vietnam-war]

PMSS AND THE VIETNAM WAR AND THE WAR ON POVERTY

At the opening of the Vietnam conflict, Pine Mountain was no longer a Community School site but many of the children who had attended the Community School began to be caught up in the action in Vietnam as they came of age. The most dramatic impact on Pine Mountain of this conflict was the same as that found throughout the country. Families were wrenched apart by conflicting sympathies for the war effort and communities were pitted against other communities as the war dragged on for almost two decades. Coal was often in the news as the resources went to support the energy needs of the growing war effort and families saw both a coal boom and a large out-migration to Northern factories, as in WWII, where work in the military-industrial complex could bring better wages.

Cmdr. Steven Hayes (back row, far rt.). a student at PMSS and his crew on the USS Constellation following the end of the Viet Nam War..

In April of 1964. Lyndon Johnson traveled to Inez, Kentucky and sat on the porch of the Tom Fletcher family and declared a War on Poverty. As noted by many, the universities in the Appalachian region were more engaged in naming buildings and honoring the dead than engaging their cultural and economic conscience. A political and economic protest was not high on their agendas as they followed the welfare of family members caught up in the Vietnam conflict. Eventually, however, it was Johnson’s “War on Poverty” that created the largest shock wave on Appalachia, not the fighting in Vietnam. The fall-out from Johnson’s social service programs for the Appalachian region would have an impact far greater than any war fought in foreign lands. Many scholars today remind us that families in the region are still climbing out of poverty that was prolonged by this federal assistance effort. —the War on Poverty. The casualties from the ramifications of the War on Poverty were not just sons and daughters, it was entire families and generations of those families.

Used as a sort of guidebook for the eager volunteers that came into the region, Jack Weller‘s Yesterday’s People (1965) became the cultural window for the Appalachian Volunteer program, an outgrowth of the War on Poverty. Funded through the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Appalachian Volunteers soon found themselves in a cultural war that roughly followed the same timeline as the Viet Nam War and the political differences were often as volatile and acrimonious as the Anti-Vietnam war movement. Accused as Communists, radicals, hippies, elites, subversives, and importantly, “Outsiders,” the Appalachian Volunteers (AVs) came into the region believing that they could make a difference. Two other “outsiders, Glyn Morris, then at Evarts and Myles Horton at the Highlander Center in Tennessee cautioned the new arrivals to respect the cultural differences of the region. Both Myles Horton and Glyn Morris had studied under Reinhold Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary and Myles admonished the AVs who trained at his center in Tennessee to “…find out what they [people of Appalachia] want you to do and work quietly, and remember: you’re different. They’re not different.” Neibaur’s book, Moral Man in an Immoral Society, made a profound impact on both Morris and Horton and helped to shape both of their worldviews regarding war and each had an antipathy toward a war of any sort. Don West, poet, activist and native of Appalachia was more direct in his cautions regarding the War on Poverty

The Southern mountains have been missionarized, researched, studied, surveyed, romanticized, dramatized, hillbillyized, Dogpatched and [now] povertyized …

By 1970 the Appalachian Volunteers had lost their funding from the OEO and Johnson’s War on Poverty had come to a virtual halt, but not before a number of Harlan County youth had begun to question and rethink the cultural and economic divide in the county and had begun to dialogue with the Volunteers — often against their parent’s protests.

Mildred Shackleford, interviewed by Alessandro Portelli for his book They Say in Harlan County (2011) put it this way

“I got involved in them [Appalachian Volunteers] because I thought they had something different to offer and I wasn’t too sophisticated at that time. I was about sixteen or seventeen years old. I was reading a lot. I was finding out different things. The involvement in Vietnam — I was finding out a little bit of it and I found out that, what the United States was doing in that country, wasn’t something that I could respect; and I hadn’t thought [of] looking at Harlan County in the same way that I looked at Vietnam. That’s one thing I did learn from those people pretty quickly; that in a way we were more like the people in Vietnam than [like] the people in the rest of the country.”

War comes in many forms and is met with an equal variety of responses. Whether it was the Civil War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, the War on Poverty, or the wars in the Middle East, the people of Appalachia have been there as defenders, patriots, educators, nurses, and very often, leaders, and they often carry the lessons of the Pine Mountain Valley. Most have never been far away from their place, their early educations, and the many lessons of Pine Mountain.

*The commentary in this blog is that of the author, Helen Wykle [sister of Steven Hayes], and does not necessarily represent the views of Pine Mountain Settlement School. hhw

Resources:

Billings, Dwight B; Ann E. Kingsolver. Appalachia in Regional Context; Place Matters, Lexington, Ky: University Press, 2018.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1932.

Portelli, Alessandro. They Say in Harlan County, Oxford/New York:Oxford University Press, 2011. Oral histories taken from families in Harlan County.

Satterwhite, Emily. City to Country circa 1967-1970, Looks at war in the populations of city and country.

Webb, James. I Heard My Country Calling; A Memoir. New York : Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2015. ©2014. A novel about the Vietnam War by Webb, a former U.S. Senator; Secretary of the Navy; recipient of the Navy Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart and combat Marine. In his words, “…a love story–love of family, love of country, love of service. ” Born in Arkansas but with roots in Appalachia, the Webb family saga spans WWII, Korea and the Vietnam years. Explores the Vietnam War through the over-romanticized novel Christy by Catherine Marshall and the “familiar” depravity of Appalachians as depicted in James Dickey’s Deliverance.

Weller, Jack. Yesterday’s People, Kentucky : University of Kentucky Press, 1965 (reprint 1995) “Mr. Weller presents, with compassion and humor, one of the most incisive studies that have been made of an American folk community. It contains many quotable passages about social classes in America, and about Appalachia in particular.”―Publishers Weekly

See more at: http://kentuckyguard.dodlive.mil/2013/03/19/a-patriotic-clan-from-eastern-kentucky-in-the-war-to-end-all-wars-part-one/#sthash.1NIycerE.dpuf

Kentucky Soldiers in WWII, Harlan County http://usgwarchives.net/ky/military/wwii/harlan.html

See also: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-11-11/news/1991315046_1_appalachian-counties-vietnam-war